NONSEQUITUR.
John Wyndham's apotheosis in Penguin Classics reminded me of an unlikely
title from e-mail.... 'The Finnegan Wakes: The disturbing,
incest-haunted, cyclical dream of a huge drunken sea-monster is related,
using a variety of multi-lingual puns.' [GA via BR]

Neil
Gaiman feels grumpy: 'I was surprised to discover from
yesterday's Mirror [18 March] that I'm meant to have accused
J.K. Rowling of ripping off Tim Hunter from Books of Magic for
Harry Potter. Simply isn't true – and now it's on the public
record it'll follow me around forever.  Back in November I was
tracked down by a Scotsman journalist who had noticed the
similarities between my Tim Hunter character and Harry Potter, and
wanted a story. I disappointed him by explaining that, no, I certainly
didn't believe that Rowling had ripped off Books of Magic,
that I doubted she'd read it and that it wouldn't matter if she had: I
wasn't the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor
was Rowling the first to send one to school. (The only mild bother was
that in the Books of Magic movie Warners is planning, Tim Hunter
can no longer be a bespectacled, 12 year old English kid. But given the
movie world I'll just be pleased if he's not played by a middle-aged
large-muscled Austrian.) Not sure how this transmuted into "Gaiman
has accused Rowling of ripping him off." I suppose it's a better
story than "Gaiman doesn't accuse Rowling of ripping him off".'

Philip
Pullman found that the Amazon.com page for his upcoming
fantasy included a message supposedly from himself: 'Trully my best
piece of work. / Good day to all my readers, I never new I had so many
who admired my novels so dearly. I am so sorry to all my readers who are
waiting for Amber Spyglass to come out ...' Pullman: 'Close
textual analysis seemed to cast a doubt over the authorship of this.'

J.K.
Rowling is responsible for an exciting breakthrough in virtual
publishing: 'Stocks of the fourth [Harry Potter] novel which Rowling has
yet to finish writing have already sold out on the website of internet
bookseller Amazon.' (Manchester Metro News, 8 March) [MH]

Michael
Swanwick longs to become the Simon R. Green of Ansible
self-promotion: 'Since I'd broken my toe a week before, I was hobbling
around Boskone on a cane happily clutching a brand-new copy of the NESFA
festschrift, Moon Dogs, and another of Puck Aleshire's
Abecedary, the chapbook of the short-shorts I ran in NYRSF.
Pointing out to anyone who would listen that these were only half
the collections I'd have out this year. Marianne said to me, "You
know, you've got the makings of a good murder mystery here." And
when I asked How so, she said, "Tomorrow morning when you're found
beaten to death with your own cane and the detective asks who had a
motive to kill you, every writer in the hotel is going to raise his hand
and shout, 'Me! Me!'"'

Publishers
and Sinners. Paper Tiger editor John Grant preferred
not to comment on the catalogue of their US distributor Sterling, which
lists the imprint's top megastar artists as Boris Vallejo and John
Grant.  Winchell Dredge, master of sensitive character
descriptions for Wild Rampage Wrestling ('And then, as though to
show his true nature, his eyes turn up to show just white, and a demonic
tongue snakes out of his mouth.') was outed in the 29 Feb Washington
Post as a pseudonym of sf author David Bischoff. Many Rampage
writers are 'moonlighting horror and sci-fi scribes'; the (then) editor
was Scott Edelman. [MMW]

AdelaideFestivalballs.Yvonne Rousseau liked one fantasy reading, thus: Elizabeth
Knox reads from The Vintner's Luck, frequently mentioning
the angel Xas. Introducer James Griffin: 'I'm sure that many of
us reading The Vintner's Luck would like to know: how do you
pronounce the name spelt X-A-S?' Elizabeth Knox (exactly as
before): 'Xas.'

R.I.P.Gary Avedikian (1914-2000), Avedon Carol's father and a provider
of hospitality to countless fans visiting Maryland (including me and
Hazel), died on 27 March aged 86.  Mary Brown (1929-1999),
UK author whose fantasy debut was The Unlikely Ones (1986), died
on 20 December; she was 70. [SFC]  John Colicos, actor
unfortunately best known for playing Battlestar Galactica's
villain, died in Toronto on 6 March. He was 71. [SH] Alex Comfort
(1920-2000) died on 26 March at age 80; most famous for The Joy of
Sex, he also wrote some satirical sf, such as Come Out To Play
(1961).  Martin Davis (1942-2000), once involved in Prisoner
production, and a member of esoteric Dave Fandom as 'Dave Syrup', died
on 8 March – his 58th birthday. [G]  David Duncan
(1913-1999), US author/screenwriter best known for Occam's Razor
(1957), died on 27 December aged 86. [SFC]  Gerald A. Facey
(1919-1999), British artist who painted until the early 1990s, died last
Spring. Steve Holland credits him with 'those atrocious covers to the
early Spencer magazines (Futuristic Science Stories, Wonders
of the Spaceways, etc.) and covers for the boys' mag/comic Tarzan
Adventures.'  Charles Gray, British actor known for
Hammer movies, Rocky Horror Picture Show narration and playing
Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, died in London on 7 March; he
was 71. [BB]  Roger Erskine Longrigg (1929-2000),
multi-pseudonymed UK author who wrote supernatural horror as Domini
Taylor, died 26 February aged 70. [BB]  Sture Lönnerstrand
(1919-1999), the first modern Swedish sf author and the father of
Swedish fandom, died on 30 September 1999 aged 80. [JHH]

Thog's
Genetics Masterclass. Conversation between three astronauts: '"The
difference between human and ape DNA is less than three percent!" "Yes,
but that's the difference between us – and Einstein!" "Or ...
Jack the Ripper."' (Mission to Mars movie, 2000)
[MMW]

Outraged
Letters.Michael & Jeri Bishop confirm last
issue's belated 18/8/99 end-of-the-world prediction: 'Criswell was
correct. On August 18, 1999, our granddaughter Annabel English Loftin
was born in Athens, Georgia, and the world as we previously knew it
ceased to exist. An amazing prediction.'  Dave Clark on
Supernova: 'It's the first film to sport the new directors'
pseudonym, when a director disavows a film where control was taken away.
Walter Hill was director, but "Thomas Lee" is credited. "Lee"
replaces "Alan Smithee", which got too much attention with
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn in 1997.'  Bob
Devney on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, 13 Mar: 'We usually bake a
cake, synthesize a religion, and dash off, oh, say, 60,000 words in the
evening to celebrate.'  Alastair Reynolds watched University
Challenge (3 Apr) and was stunned by 'the once-in-a-lifetime
experience of Jeremy Paxman attempting to pronounce "Gardner Dozois"
...'

How
To Campaign For Awards. Expert manipulator Lawrence Person
commends Baen Books for mailing novels at lowest US book rate three
weeks before the Hugo deadline, with mangled and incomplete copies of
the Hugo ballot; Bantam for a 1 March package aimed to sway preliminary
Nebula balloting, which closed on 23 February; and Amazing for
an envelope with the promoted story not actually enclosed.

Thog's
Masterclass. 'His wasn't actually a handsome face: without
animation, the harsh planes looked uncompromising, the nose prominent,
jutting out from a wide and high brow.' (Anne McCaffrey, The Rowan,
1990) [BA]  Dept of Visual Acuity: 'He saw the bullets
coming from the other man's gun.' (Petru Popescu, Almost Adam,
1996) [AK]  Dept of Psychic Entendre. Psychic detective
Elaine goes into trance state when helping the police: '"You were
describing the two in bed," he said. "Please continue." /
Elaine looked at him a moment, as if deciding whether she wanted to or
not. "It's hard going in and out like this," she said.'
(Robert K. Wilcox, Fatal Glimpse, 1981) [PB]  Dept of
Relativity: 'She ducked at the thunder like some stone-age
primitive, counting off the seconds until lightning flared as she tried
to work out how far away the storm was.' (Jon Courtenay Grimwood, reMix,
1999) [TF] 'The creatures flew over the seas at an altitude of almost a
kilometer, yet their bony heads were on the ocean and not each other
...' (Jack Chalker, The Sea Is Full of Stars, 1999) [RH] 
Dept of Alternate Mathematics: '... if the entire world were to
become a police state obsessed with recovering old secrets, then vast
resources might be thrown at the problem of factoring large prime
numbers.' (Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon, 1999) [JF]

It is possible to hear the voice of John Sladek describing the career
of John Sladek. The voice is slightly husky, hums and haws as it awaits
a moment of inspiration from its owner, then lifts suddenly above its
American prairie twang as something extremely hilarious comes down the
line. It would be (I will not try to sound like John in full flow, he
was too funny and too savage and too sad to be copied) a joke, sometimes
a very great joke.

– Oh, yeah (he could be imagined saying), I remember John
Sladek. He was the guy who called his first acknowledged novel The
Reproductive System, and it wasn't non-fiction. He was the
guy who brought out his second novel with a different firm, and
called it The Müller-Fokker Effect, and it wasn't ever
bought because nobody ever dared try to pronounce it at W H
Smith's. He was the guy whose masterpiece, which was called Roderick,
was too big to go into one volume, so his publisher (this was his third
sf publisher, by the way, and probably his fifth overall) released it in
two vols, the first hardback, the second, three years later, mass market
paperback: demolished, disappeared, invisible. This is the novel David
Hartwell of Timescape Books published the first two thirds of volume one
of in the States, as a pb original to be completed in two further
instalments – just before Timescape Books became an ex-desk at Simon
and Schuster, which was all the American market got to see of Roderick
for years.

– Oh, yeah (he might have continued), I remember John Sladek.
He was the guy who published two detective novels, starring series
detective Thackeray Phin, with different publishers. He was the
guy who published some of the greatest and funniest and most melancholy
short stories of the latter years of the 20th century in three mass
market paperbacks with titles like Keep the Giraffe Burning. He
was the guy who wrote about Scientology in The New Apocrypha and
the insolent praetorians of The LRON whupped his ass for talking out of
turn. He was the guy who did a novel with Tom Disch called Black
Alice – which was not about bussing – and guess what they
called themselves? Thom Demijohn. Which sounds more like a portaloo than
a name. The Thom Demijohn: 'For Loving Couples'. Bestseller
written all over that one! He was the guy who wrote (as James Vogh)
a 'nonfiction' spoof called Arachne Rising: the Thirteenth Sign of
the Zodiac, and for the first time in his life his readers believed
him.

John Sladek (1937-2000) was an endomorph, short, sometimes overweight,
congenial, lazy-seeming; but capable (like all endomorphs) of somehow
managing to do far more work than ever seems possible. He wrote 24 books
over the course of a career that began in the late 1960s and ended, as
far as the publishing world was concerned, about 1990. He was born in
Iowa, raised in Minneapolis, moved to Europe about 1965, did New
Worlds stuff, lived for a while with Pamela Zoline and Tom Disch in
the flat that (personal note) Judith Clute and I moved into in 1969,
married Pamela Sladek in London, where he stayed (latterly in Swiss
Cottage and Tottenham Hale) until 1986 when the marriage broke down and
he returned to Minneapolis. They had a daughter, Dorothea. They all
remained close. He met Sandra Gunter in 1994, they married, his last
years (some of us saw him now and then, when he visited the UK) were
happy.

It must be said that, although the world defeated him several times,
he was a collaborator. It should also be said that, with all the
complications of what I think must be described as genius, he had a
pretty good life. He loved (in particular) women. He knew for a long
time he was not going to make old bones – the progressive lung
condition he died of was hereditary. He knew he would never be properly
recognized in his lifetime for the terrifying default rightness of his
vision of America, and he certainly knew as well that his two decades in
England had given him no saving alternate vision, either in the life or
in the work – but he must (surely, surely) have suspected that those
who knew his work, and therefore loved him, would become more numerous.
He must have known that some of us thought he made sense of things.

His dying puts a period to some of the meaning of the world.

The printed Ansible obituary (6 April) was shorter than
– though closely similar to – this expanded text sent by John Clute
on 11 April.

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I fondly remember many quips like the Sladekian insight into cloning:
'Some journalists claim certain rich men are hiring biologists to clone
them. Other journalists think clones are pointy cylinders.'

Another word from 2Kon: 'Any fan who needs to check booking details
already confirmed can still contact Cuddles on 0141 558 2862 or
cuddles.batcave@ndirect.co.uk.'

15 Years Ago. At Yorcon III, the Leeds Eastercon held over 5-8
April 1985: 'Popular TAFF winners Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden
displayed remarkable resource by dividing up the expected duties of
transatlantic visitors: he nobly attended to the consumption of much
native beer, and she as nobly did the falling over.' (Ansible 43,
1985)